Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
Jack KornfieldRead
Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the present moment is the ideal time to cultivate compassion and awareness, regardless of circumstances.
Jack Kornfield's quote suggests that, no matter your location or situation, you have the power to awaken to the present moment and practice compassion and loving awareness. It reminds us that true freedom and the ability to create positive change start from within, and that we have everything we need to embrace our experiences and foster kindness towards ourselves and others.
In practice
During a mindfulness workshop, you might say this quote to encourage participants to embrace their current experience.
Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.
The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?
We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred.
According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the "quivering of the pure heart" when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.
Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.
I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.
The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Once in awhile you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look it right
You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.
It almost hurts me to walk down a road and have people grab my hand and ask for my autograph and not sit and talk. When I'm finished I'm not going to be on the front page, but I'm going to be just as happy without the publicity.
Nothing is hidden so much that it wouldn't be revealed through its fruit.
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